jquery - $(this) doesn't work in a function

Question

The following code loads html content from a file (i used this thread)

<script>
$.fn.loadWithoutCache = function (){
 $.ajax({
     url: arguments[0],
     cache: false,
     dataType: "html",
    success: function(data) {
        $(this).html(data);        // This is not working
      //$('#result').html(data);   //THIS WORKS!!!
        alert(data);           // This alerts the contents of page.html
    }
 });
}


$('#result').loadWithoutCache('page.html');

</script>

Please let me know what the problem is? I hope it's something stupid :)

Edit: CORRECT CODE

<script>
$(document).ready(function() {

$.fn.loadWithoutCache = function (){
 var $el = $(this);
 $.ajax({
     url: arguments[0],
     cache: false,
     dataType: "html",
     context: this,
     success: function(data) {
     $el.html(data);
    }
 });
}

$('#result').loadWithoutCache('page.html');

});
</scipt>

Thanks Jon and everyone!

Answer 1

The problem is that inside the success callback, this does not have the value you expect it to.

However, you do have access to this (with the expected value) inside loadWithoutCache itself. So you can achieve your goal by saving $(this) into a local variable and accessing it from inside the success handler (creating a closure).

This is what you need to do:

$.fn.loadWithoutCache = function (){
 var $el = $(this);
 $.ajax({
     url: arguments[0],
     cache: false,
     dataType: "html",
     success: function(data) {
        $el.html(data);
        alert(data);
    }
 });
}